Turning import-document reconciliation into a controlled wire-transfer workflow.

The manual problem

Import payment preparation can require information from multiple Commercial Invoices, Cargo Receipts, Forwarder’s Cargo Receipts, Bills of Lading, Packing Lists, price data, vendor banking information, and a required finance workbook. The risk is not just time: the user has to prove that the documents agree before preparing the payment file.

The five-step workflow

1. Start & Vendor Setup. Select or maintain vendor information and use the standard standardized workbook layout.
2. Load Documents. Load multiple Commercial Invoice workbooks plus Cargo Receipt/BOL PDFs. Optional Packing Lists can supplement or stand in for cargo receipts, and packing-list tabs embedded in invoice workbooks can also be read.
3. Price Verification. Check invoice line items against the selected price sheet. Price differences are flagged for review; defined part-number patterns are routed to the parts account, while other unmatched items require a manual price and named approval.
4. Reconcile PO Matches. Compare invoice and shipping-document evidence using purchase-order information before payment preparation.
5. Build Wire Transfer. Convert reconciled results into the standard WCS wire-transfer workbook while preserving its layout, cell positions, formatting, and live total formulas.

Controls built into the tool

• Extracted invoice and shipping-document fields can be reviewed and corrected before downstream processing.
• Freight, pallet, logistics, and transportation charges are detected where possible and included in invoice totals.
• Re-reading a file with the same name replaces the previous version rather than duplicating it.
• Price mismatches remain visible and can be carried forward as comments when not corrected or confirmed.
• The standard WCS template is embedded in the application, with support for a replacement template if finance changes the layout.
• The wire sheet has a controlled 17-line capacity matching the preformatted WCS rows; larger batches are explicitly flagged for splitting.

Parked work and audit history

A reconciliation can be parked and resumed later, allowing a supplier’s invoices to accumulate across sessions before one final WCS sheet is generated. The application also maintains a Processed Invoices Log with vendor, invoice, amount, ship date, wire date, and generated wire-file information, and the log can be exported to Excel.

Time measurement

The application tracks step elapsed time, processing wait time, and total session time. This helps distinguish employee working time from computer processing time.

Why this example matters

This example coordinates several document types, applies business rules, preserves review points, handles incomplete work across sessions, produces a finance-ready workbook, and retains an audit-oriented processing history.